Cats on Mars
by poqo
Summary: Yeongha wonders on Hikaru; her powerful Go, and more importantly, her stunning disinterest in it entirely. femHikaru!xYeongha sbtw AU


_from veltpunch's "space between two worlds" verse. i really do love Yeongha...and hikaru... together... (:_

* * *

><p>Yongha, eyes wide. He's got a wild mess of hair, tousled and unmanageable, and it sits atop of his head like a crows nest, bitter strands in his face. It's short, curling just below his ears and cut across his forehead straight, but the pieces move about as they like. It looks nothing like the mane of auburn hair it will become. For now, he looks boyish and untamed, ruthless and invigorated in the youth that burns ephemeral beneath his lashes, in his mouth and in the sinewy muscles and tendons of his arms.<p>

Shindou is next to him; sixth row, seat one. Her head is leaning against the window—almost imperceptible—eyes closed and drooping slowly, until spiky lashes make shadows, lit with the sun behind the window. Hair dyed blonde like lemons, turning gold at the edges like the tip of her nose seared in yellow.

Her mouth is open—she's sleeping again.

Shindou Hikaru sleeps all the time.

From their first class until lunch she doses off. Her grades falter because of it. Seoul is loud and restless in all hours of the night, and her apartment hangs loftily above a busy intersection. The Chinese takeout store is always loud with their radio that plays oriental music, the TV set to Chinese soap operas, and the voices of the people who come and go at the twenty-four hour shop. Its noisy, but Hikaru likes it, because the strung paper lanterns on the street remind her of the bright fireworks festivals of Japan, where she'd clutch her parents hands and stare sightlessly into a burning sky.

Her parents are gone.

Her grandfather is alone in Japan.

And there she was, sleeping away in her first class.

Yongha ponders her silently. He isn't used to the art of this girl, who is so different from his other female classmates he could consider her a different species. Her Korean is butchered, her winterwheat hair is malleable and her eyes glitter green like distant, foreign lands. Her Go is incorruptible.

The uniform is too big on her, and the red ribbon around her collared neck hands loose and limp.

"If you sleep all class you'll fail." He reminds her tartly as the lunch bell rings.

The silent, faceless crowd of SAIS thins out from the classroom, hushed, vague voices.

She wakes dizzily, hand to her head. "Couldn't sleep." Drowsy voice, hair mussed from sleep.

Her eyes focus on Yongha, who has his hands in his pockets, sleeved rolled to his elbows.

There are a couple girls wavering around the classroom door, occasionally sneaking glances at him. In hurried Korean, one asks if she should invite him. They clutch each other and descend into giggles. Yongha's expression is stony and fixed on her, and she doubts he's heard anything at all. He was rather oblivious like that. The girls giggle some more, and shift their feet and grab each other's sleeves.

Hikaru frowns.

"Why don't you go without me…." She decides upon, eyes not leaving their point behind him.

The auburn-haired boy scowls lazily. "No. I want a rematch today."

"Right now?" She asks incredulously. It's hard to decipher which meaning she is intending to use, because her grip on the language is broken at best. There's surprise in her eyes, and that's really all he needs.

"Yes."

He closes her text book—which are set to a page that they had passed an hour ago in class.

She looks at him confusingly, and he frowns, thinking she hasn't understood him.

"Go." He says, remembering the Japanese word for it.

She blinks in surprise. Her mouth makes an "oh". Her eyes are bright and he tears his gaze away with a blush. He pulls her wrist and she stumbles behind him, they pass through the crowd of girls.

They've just met, so he doesn't think it's okay to hold her wrist for much longer, and he drops it in the corridor. He's pleased that she's following adamantly behind him. He doesn't know that's because a ghost is trailing behind her in ecstasy at the thought of another match—and she's a bit done with feeling sick over his sadness.

"I'm glad I found you." She says.

He turns back, questioning. "Huh?"

"I like Go." She smiles.

Yeongha smirks. "So do I."

But he's a professional now, and he's not about to be bested by this girl again. Twice she had gotten the better of him—but only because he had underestimated her. She was a girl, for one, and so small and pretty and a little timid in this big, foreign country. Of course, he could see the stubborn temerity as more of the shyness peeled away, a mulishness she was known for, but only after encountering her Go.

He drags her through the dripping rain, pattering against the pavement and streaking down her face, all the way to the salon where she shakes out her blonde hair and follows him to the back.

He takes a deep breath, and she cracks her neck.

His hands are shaking as he draws a palm full of white stones, but he catches that strange, passing look of curiosity on her face as she places two black, and gets white for this match.

Like she's amused by Go.

He plays the upper right star point. She counters with the left. He plays again, and this time he expects the Shuusaku diagonal. When it comes, he dives for the kill.

Nothing more, nothing less.

By the end he's exhausted and stinging with the bitter pain of defeat, and she's staring into the board as if she'd never seen such a brilliant illusion of black and white.

"It's a really strange game, don't you think?" She says with her beguiling voice in broken Korean.

He looks up.

"It doesn't look like anything from here." She continues on, confusing him. "You can't see how deep it is. It just looks like… an illusion."

Yeongha isn't sure if she meant those words or if she only accidentally chose the wrong translation—perhaps he'll never know.

At the time he only shrugged it off. There were more important things, more games to play with this enigmatic girl, more lessons to learn.

.

.

.

But as he recreated this game many months later, his vision unseeing as he had made this one countless times, he wondered of her insurmountable brilliance, and her strange, childish words.

* * *

><p><em>revieewwsss?<em>


End file.
